


where flowers bloom

by pyrrhic_victory



Series: dangerous sentiments [5]
Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: Cardassian Culture, Claustrophobia, Episode: s03e05 Second Skin, Episode: s3e06 The Abandoned, Established Relationship, Flirting, Flowers, Genetic Engineering, Homesickness, M/M, Romantic Fluff, Secret Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-02
Updated: 2020-01-07
Packaged: 2021-02-27 08:48:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 13,176
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22084423
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pyrrhic_victory/pseuds/pyrrhic_victory
Summary: Julian tries to convince Garak to go on a date to the holosuites. Their plans are somewhat sidelined when Kira is abducted by the Obsidian Order.
Relationships: Julian Bashir/Elim Garak
Series: dangerous sentiments [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1576258
Comments: 45
Kudos: 231





	1. Chapter 1

“You’re so...striking,” Julian mumbled, upon seeing Garak sitting at his table. Not his most eloquent, but he had just woken up. 

On the rare occasions he could convince Garak to stay in his quarters overnight, Julian was used to falling asleep first and waking up second. As usual, Garak had already dressed, had replicated breakfast for him and was working at the table with a coffee for himself. 

“What do you want, Julian?” Garak kept his eyes on his padd.

“To tell you how handsome you are. Isn’t that allowed?” 

It wasn’t. Garak always found flattery incredibly suspicious. 

One eye-ridge raised. “I‘ve already made you breakfast.” 

Julian sat down opposite him. “You’re always flattering me. Last night you called me pretty.” 

“Even I have to tell the truth sometimes, my dear. It makes the lies more believable.” He sighed very pointedly lowered the padd with a look like a disapproving schoolteacher. “Now. What is it you want?”

Julian bit into his toast and pointed at Garak with the corner. “I want to tell my boyfriend he’s attractive without being interrogated for an ulterior motive.” 

Garak rolled his eyes. “Oh, must you speak with your mouth full?” 

“Yes, I must, because I’ll be late for the conference otherwise.” 

“Fear not. Your transport has been delayed by an hour due to an issue in the impulse engines. Since you’ll be late anyway, you can use the time to learn how to chew your food with your mouth closed.” 

Julian frowned. Garak had a bad habit of keeping things to himself until he thought they were relevant, never mind when Julian would have liked to know. 

“When were you going to tell me that?” 

Garak sipped his coffee and put on an innocent look. 

“Hmm, I imagine it would have become relevant after you inhaled your breakfast. You would no doubt have been delighted to find yourself with an entire hour of free time in which to tell your _boyfriend_ just how alluring you find him, in a misguided attempt to make him more amenable to whatever foolish endeavour you were planning to suggest.” 

He finished with a stern look, and Julian gave in. 

“Alright, so I thought it would be nice if - after I’m back from Klaestron IV-“ Garak breathed in deeply and closed his eyes, as one does before a heavy sigh. “-if we could go to the holosuites. I found a program of these botanical gardens on Earth-“ 

Garak scoffed. “A holosuite program? In Quark’s? Really, doctor, we might as well make love on the promenade for all the subtlety that would afford us.” 

Julian sighed. It was always a battle trying to get Garak to spend time with him anywhere other than their quarters, and even then he was reluctant to be there too often, in case someone noticed. His paranoia was always there in the background. 

“Not everyone uses the holosuites for sex, that’s just something Quark puts about. Friends use them together all the time. I think Dax and Kira went rock climbing last week.” 

“Yes, but I doubt you and Chief O’Brien are visiting botanical gardens together.” 

“Nobody’s going to know what program we’re running.” 

Garak waved a hand dismissively. 

“Anyone with a passing knowledge of isolinear subprocessors could access the information in a matter of moments. Not to mention that Quark himself almost certainly monitors the programs, and he is hardly known for his discretion.” 

“Okay, so what? You said you were a gardener before, right? Why can’t a friend who is knowledgeable about gardening go to some gardens with a friend who is interested in learning about gardening?”

Garak tilted his head disbelievingly. 

“You’re interested in learning about gardening?” 

“Well- I could be.” He tried to look as earnest and hopeful as he could. Garak did not look convinced. “Oh, please? At least promise you’ll think about it.” 

“I have thought about it, and I think it’s a bad idea.” 

“Then think about it again while I’m at the conference.” 

“You are infuriatingly stubborn, do you know that?” 

“You wouldn’t like me half as much if I wasn’t.” 

Julian grinned, and Garak watched him very dubiously over his tea. He’d been working very hard on ways to convince him to do fun things that weren’t strictly discreet. Thus far, the occasional dinner had been deemed acceptable, so long as they missed lunch that week and didn’t stay out too late. 

“I will...think about it.”

Julian beamed. “Thank you, Garak.” 

“I will _think_ about it.” Garak gestured sternly with his mug, though his eyes had softened a little. They always did when Julian smiled at him like that. “That does not guarantee an agreement, now or when you return from the conference.”

It made agreement much more likely, but Julian wasn’t going to point that out. 

He was considering a number of ways he could convince Garak that the holosuite program was a very good idea, most of which involved getting very close to him without many clothes on, when his communicator beeped. 

_“Dax to Bashir.”_

He dropped his toast. “Bashir here. Go ahead.” 

_“Hi, Julian. Can we have a look at the patterns of that Romulan fungal infection again before you go? It’s got some interesting similarities to a computer virus I’ve been studying.”_

“Um- yes. Sure.” Julian coughed. It was always awkward to comm people while Garak was there. “I’ve got an hour before my transport leaves. I’ll meet you in the infirmary?” 

_“Acknowledged.”_

“Sorry, Garak. Got to go.”

Garak did one of his exaggerated wide-eyed expressions. 

“But of course. Duty calls. I shall see you in a few days, then.” 

Julian got up and kissed him on the cheek. 

“Yep. Bye, Garak. Love you.” 

Garak blinked at him, expression softening, always at a loss when he said that. 

“Goodbye, doctor. Do try to be careful.” 

As he’d expected, Odo hadn’t noticed him spending the night in Garak’s quarters after the mission in the Gamma Quadrant, and he’d managed to persuade Garak that it was perfectly reasonable for friends to crash on each other’s couches, which is what he’d tell people if they asked what they were doing together. 

Still, he only got to fall asleep with Garak once every couple of weeks, if that. The man was more paranoid than anyone should ever be. With good reason, perhaps, but it was starting to rub off on Julian. Sometimes he caught someone glancing at him across the promenade and had to shake off the feeling that they were watching him. 

“Funny thing,” Dax began when he arrived in the infirmary. “I tried to find you in your quarters earlier, and you weren’t there. So I asked the computer, and it said it couldn’t find you. What were you up to?” 

Julian swallowed. He was bad at keeping secrets when he was asked directly. Garak had done something to his combadge so the tracking function sometimes failed when they were together, making anyone accessing the computer files less likely to notice the pattern. 

“Oh. That’s odd. I was just, um, giving some medication to a patient.” 

“At this hour?” 

“Yes. Well. I knew I’d be leaving today, and he’s a very difficult patient, so I had to check in on him.” 

“Chief O’Brien’s shoulder again?” 

Knowing Dax, she would probably ask Miles about it later, who would deny it, which would make her more suspicious. Garak had told him that the best lies were mostly true. 

“Um, no. It’s Garak, actually. It’s impossible to get him to come to the infirmary, so if the mountain won’t come to Muhammad...” 

“I see. Is he alright?”

“Hm?” Dax looked politely interested. “Oh! Yes, it’s a chronic thing. He gets migraines, that’s all. Um, about the Romulan fungus?” 

“Oh, right. So the thing is...”

# ***

Garak wasn’t entirely cut off from the politics of Cardassia. As the only one of his people on the station, he’d become an unofficial representative during less serious diplomatic incidents- at least until someone odious like Dukat arrived. 

Still, he didn’t receive many messages from home. Occasionally, an old ‘friend’ might send a coded message asking for information. He preferred these - decrypting the messages and sending off encrypted information in return (accurate or not, as he wished) made him feel like he was still part of the Order. And very, very occasionally, he would get an order from Central Command to sort out a mess with the Federation.

But when he heard the console in his shop beep the afternoon after Julian returned from his conference, and found a message waiting for him, it was not an instruction but a very interesting piece of information from an old contact. Major Kira had been abducted by the Order, and was being held on Cardassia Prime. 

Kira? Why? She was highly ranked in the Bajoran militia, but during the Occupation she’d been nothing more than a terrorist. What could they want from her? Information on Deep Space Nine? Surely there was a less dramatic way to go about it. And did they really expect Bajor - and Kira’s dedicated Starfleet friends - to simply let this go without a thorough investigation?

The safest thing to do was shoot off an inquiry for more information. 

He was running out of favours to call in, but this one worked out. A few hours later, he had a bit more information. She was being held in the home of Legate Tekeny Ghemor. That took a bit of puzzling together before he worked out the connection between Order involvement and a dissident figurehead whose missing daughter bore a remarkable resemblance to Kira. 

Interesting. 

More interesting, the operation was being run by Corbin Entek. Entek had once served under him, but then took on quite a strong role in Order command some time after Garak’s exile. And being powerful in the Order, Entek had enemies, some of whom were Garak’s friends, and one of whom he’d been lucky enough to contact for this information. From the tone of the message, he got the impression this friend wouldn’t particularly mind if something were to go catastrophically awry with Entek’s plans. 

Garak wouldn’t particularly mind, either. 

He didn’t mean to get involved after he told Julian what was happening. Really, he didn’t. He assumed the matter would be left to the Starfleeters and their misplaced heroism and they’d retrieve Kira from Ghemor’s home on their own initiative. 

But Commander Sisko was unfortunately quite Cardassian in his thinking, and never let an opportunity go by when he saw one. 

“Are you packing?” Julian frowned at him. He’d used his medical override to get into Garak’s quarters when he didn’t answer the door. 

“How observant of you.” Garak grabbed the disruptor from his desk and the knife from his bedside table, both of which Julian raised his eyebrows at, and tossed them into his bag. 

“I thought you couldn’t leave the station.” 

“That hasn’t stopped Commander Sisko from commanding it. I used to think that title was a little obvious. Now I see it is completely appropriate.” 

“That’s ridiculous, he can’t do that. You’ve as much right to be here as anyone else.” 

“That is to say, no right at all.” Garak snatched a padd from the table and tossed it in. “I’ll save you the trouble of being sanctimonious. We’re taking a little trip to Cardassia to rescue Major Kira.” 

He couldn’t quite decide whether he was angry about this development or not. On one hand, being a Federation lackey had no appeal whatsoever, nor did dying on a Federation ship with a crew of Federation officers because they’d failed to be subtle about entering Cardassian space. 

On the other hand, Cardassian space was exactly where he wanted to be. The urge to rile things up in the Order again overtook him, no matter how self-destructive the impulse was. He wanted to matter. 

“You’re not allowed on Cardassia,” Julian said. 

“Really? I had no idea. I chose to live on this freezing station for my own amusement.” 

Julian folded his arms. Garak sighed very carefully and tried to compose himself a little better.

Perhaps he’d get to breathe Cardassian air again. They would almost certainly have to beam down to retrieve Kira. 

“Will they hurt her?” 

Garak slung his bag over his shoulder, silent. He suspected they wouldn’t, until it became clear that she wasn’t going to tell them anything about the station, or help them expose Ghemor. Then they almost certainly would. Entek had never been known for his kindness. None of them had. 

“Garak.”

“What do you think?”

“Then I’m coming with you.” 

“Julian-“ 

“Kira’s my friend, and she might be hurt. Unless Sisko orders me off the ship, I’m going.”

Apparently, Starfleet officers were allowed to invite themselves on missions such as these.

To say the _Defiant_ was cramped was a vast understatement. He could barely walk two steps in his ‘cabin’ without hitting a wall, and the corridors were far too cold and narrow for his liking. 

He was going home. For a brief visit, or perhaps for a death sentence. It came to the same thing. He was going home - not just to Cardassia Prime, but to the capital. 

The walls pressed far too close. He closed his eyes and tried the Romulan meditation technique that used to work for him. Nearly three years on an airless prison in space had apparently reduced its effectiveness, because his heart was still going a little too fast to be comfortable.

_Breathe. Control yourself._

Many who spoke of Tekeny Ghemor said he was an honourable man, a paragon of the old Cardassian ways.

He was also a dissident. 

He and his followers said Central Command had too much power. Well, that was certainly true. That’s how they ended up with people like Gul Dukat running entire occupied planets without proper supervision. It would do Cardassia good to have people in power who thought about something other than territorial disputes for a change. 

But the dissidents questioned the Order, too. The Order needed power to protect Cardassia. It was all very well being a wide-eyed idealist when you had no idea of the things that went on behind the scenes, of the knife’s edge of diplomacy and lies that their prosperity rested on.

 _The Obsidian Order is Cardassia._

The ceiling seemed awfully low for a Federation warship. Had he grown taller? Surely not. 

He sank onto the bunk and kept his eyes closed. 

From the Order’s perspective- and from Central Command’s (it was rare they aligned completely) he was helping weaken Cardassia. His own home, his own people. No matter what he thought of the dissidents, no matter what he thought of Ghemor and Entek and what he planned to do to Kira, it went against everything he’d been taught. 

_Is Tain watching this?_

_Maybe this is a test._

_If it is, you’ve failed._

It was a constant anxiety that had followed him his entire life; the fear that not only was Tain watching, but had engineered the situation specifically to test his loyalty.

What if he knew that he’d let Natima Lang and her students go? Tain might have sent Gul Toran to give the orders personally. A test within a test, to see if he’d jump through all the hoops to end his exile, no matter how humiliating.

The air was too tight and cold to breathe. The walls- he could see them crumbling, a faded echo of Tzenketh flashing in his head. 

He stalked out of the cabin. There had to be some other entertainment available to him besides beating out his brains for a little treason. 

# ***

“This is an Alpha Red Priority Mission, clearance verification 9218-black. By authority of the Central Command, you are ordered to turn your ships around, erase all records of this encounter from your logs and talk of it to no-one. Is that clear?” 

Julian stared. Everything about Garak that he recognised as _Garak_ had disappeared and in his place was a stranger. 

There was no polite conversation, no prevaricating or clever misdirection. There were no exaggerated gestures or expressions, no placating politeness to avoid undue conflict with a stranger. His whole posture had changed into one of rigid authority. This was the appearance of someone who was used to commanding so much power that his orders were followed to the letter and without question. 

_Clearance code verified,_ announced Gul Benil’s computer. Julian had barely considered the possibility that it wouldn’t be. 

“My apologies. I had no idea.” Benil, who had just seconds before been blustering with outrage at his authority being questioned, looked sheepish. Afraid. For an insane moment, Julian forgot where he was sitting and was afraid for him. 

_Even the guls feared us_ , Garak had once said. 

_I can see why,_ Julian thought. 

“You were doing your duty. End transmission.” 

And then the Garak he knew came back again, someone more suited to the garish outfit he was wearing. The one who guarded his emotions so fiercely that he couldn't share them out loud, and made Julian breakfast, and kissed him as gently as though he were made of glass. 

He breathed deeply, sighed and returned to his usual posture and polite, neutral expression. 

“Mr Garak, I’m impressed,” Sisko said. 

Garak looked dismissive. “Ah, it was just something I overheard while I was hemming someone’s trousers. I suggest that we get away from here as quickly as possible, in case Gul Benil should decide to show some initiative.” 

Julian found himself staring long after it would have been appropriate to return his gaze to the console. It was like looking at two different people. Had Garak just put on a mask, or had he taken it off? If asked, of course, he’d say both. Or neither. 

_They’re all true._

“Let’s go, Garak,” Odo said, nudging him towards the turbolift. Garak, naturally, had other ideas. 

“Ah, Commander, I think it might be prudent if I remained on the bridge now we’ve entered Cardassian space. I doubt that was only difficulty we’ll have to overcome.” 

Sisko did not seem thrilled with the idea, but Garak did have a point. “Alright. But if you so much as think about touching the controls again, you’ll be spending the rest of the trip in the brig,“ he said, fixing Garak with a firm look. 

“I’ll keep an eye on him, Commander,” Odo said. 

There was a free chair at the console next to Julian, so - under Odo’s watchful gaze - Garak strolled over to sit beside him. 

Julian cleared his throat and tried not to look flustered. 

“What were you doing near the phaser banks, Garak?” he asked. Odo had brought him in saying he’d been lurking in the access corridor. 

“To be honest, doctor,” he said, which invariably meant he wasn’t going to be honest at all, “I was looking for the mess hall. The replicator in my cabin doesn’t produce much in the way of proper Cardassian cuisine.” 

“I don’t think the mess hall has much of that either.” 

Garak tutted. “Of course not. I’m starting to wish I’d let Gul Benil capture us. At least on a Cardassian warship there might be passable yamok sauce.” 

Julian snorted and returned to monitoring his console. The real Garak was melodramatic and complained about replicated sauce and claimed to learn high-level security codes while hemming trousers. But apparently, he was also someone who didn’t flinch when he shouted down warships and hacked computers. 

“What is an Alpha Red Priority Mission? Is it a military thing, or-“ he leaned closer and whispered- “an Obsidian Order thing?” 

He didn’t expect Garak to actually tell him, but it was always entertaining watching him come up with implausible excuses. And he definitely needed to think about something other than Garak commanding him in that unwavering voice. 

“I have absolutely no idea. But Gul Benil did seem rather alarmed, didn’t he? I can only assume it’s quite serious.” 

Julian rolled his eyes fondly.

# ***

“We’ll be entering orbit of Cardassia Prime in seven minutes,” Lieutenant Dax said. It was there in the distance, spinning on without him. Home. 

Something touched his arm and he flinched. Julian’s hand. 

“You alright?” He quietly asked. “I know this isn’t exactly how you planned on going home.” Julian had been avoiding eye contact ever since the incident with Gul Benil. Perhaps he’d finally come to his senses about being in love with him, though he hoped the doctor might have been able to see through that particular mask. 

“There are worse places to be, doctor. I have been meaning to take a holiday.”

He felt Odo’s eyes watching him. Garak often thought those eyes, which were surely no more real than the rest of him, saw far more than he’d like them to. 

There was a problem with the transporter when they tried to beam down. A dampening field around Ghemor’s house - an unsurprising tactic from Entek. He must have caught on to Ghemor’s escape attempt. Fortuitous, really, because they had to beam down in the street and he could breathe proper Cardassian air.

The dim afternoon embraced him, hot and heavy. Warmth flooded his body and soothed his frantic heart. And there- oh, there were the pointed arcs on the walls, the stately buildings of the Coranum Sector, the beautiful warm colours of the architecture. Months, years of solid grey misery broke open and he could feel again. 

The house he grew up in was here somewhere, in the west, in the Paldar Sector. Tain’s house. The basement where he and his parents lived. His office. His closet. The sound of his footsteps upstairs, always looming over him. 

The Obsidian Order headquarters under the Assembly Building.

The Tarlak Grounds in the south with their monuments, where he used to watch Tolan work and pretend he was giving speeches at grand state funerals.

Tolan’s orchids. 

One of the things he missed most, living on a space station, were the flowers and gardens he'd spent most of his life in. Importing the kind of flowers he liked to grow was difficult and expensive, and he found it too depressing to dedicate much thought to.

Somewhere here in Coranum were the gardens he used to visit with Palandine. He turned- yes. That way. If he walked that way, turned left, he’d be there, and what if she-

“Garak.” Odo’s voice snapped him back. He was watching him again with those clear eyes. 

He knew a few things about exile and unpleasant homecomings. 

Garak blinked and came back to himself. He scanned the quiet street. A pair of soldiers at the end had spotted them beaming down and were coming closer. Cardassians. His people. 

He had to find the house.

“This one.” 

There was an Order guard outside the Ghemor residence and Odo incapacitated him before he could raise the alarm. The door was locked, but the mechanism wasn’t difficult for someone of his skills. There were flowerpots outside, too, and the pollen drifted through the air to clog up his nose as he worked. It calmed him better than any attempt at meditation ever had. 

# ***

“Go on. Who is she?” Jadzia asked, after Julian had spent one minute and thirty-six seconds worrying. He glanced over from the console, not sure whether she was talking to him. 

“Who’s who?” He asked, after a beat of silence. 

Dax treated him to one of her knowing looks. “Come on, Julian. You’ve been practically bouncing around the station for weeks. Who is she?” 

_Oh no._

“I don’t- oh! No, I think you’ve made a mistake. I’m not seeing anyone.”

Had he been bouncing around? Surely not. He’d been happier, probably, but not noticeably. 

“There’s no fooling me. I’ve seen that look on you before.“

_Oh, shit._

He had been whistling this morning. 

Quick, what would Garak do? Dissemble, make him think he’d figured something out when really he was on completely the wrong path. Tell a lie that was technically the truth.

“Alright, you’ve got me,” he sighed. “I was looking forward to something a few weeks ago, and then it finally happened.” 

Dax turned fully to look at him. “Go on.” 

“I didn’t want to say anything, in case it didn’t work out. But it did,” he kept rambling on. “And I’ll admit I’ve been a bit more chipper than usual about it.” 

“Don’t keep me in suspense! Come on, Julian!” 

“My paper on the first stages of the immunology project on Bajor was accepted for publication by Starfleet Medical!” He enthusiastically said. Dax opened her mouth and closed it again, and then settled for her usual knowing smile. 

“Congratulations, Julian. But is that really what’s got you so excited for weeks on end? A paper?” 

“Of course! I’ve been working on that paper for months. It’s fascinating, you know-“ she looked on in mild disbelief. “I’ll tell you another time. I’d better get to the transporter room in case...” 

Her expression became more solemn and she nodded. Garak had mentioned that she’d been surgically altered. None of them knew what state Kira would be in when they brought her back. 

It was only another minute before they got the message from Sisko - five to beam up. For a moment he was confused. Garak, Sisko and Odo were there, and so was a young Cardassian woman and an older Cardassian man. But he knew those eyes, and he realised Garak had not been exaggerating the seriousness of the kidnapping. 

He exchanged a quick nod with Garak, to make sure he was alright. He didn’t look it, but he couldn’t push it here. 

“Let’s get you to the infirmary,” he said to Kira. The Cardassian man - he had no idea who he was - made to follow. 

“It’s alright, doctor,” Kira quickly said, with a look back at the man. “He’s- he’s a friend.”

She wanted him there - Tekeny Ghemor, his name was, the victim of some complicated plan to expose the dissident movement in Cardassia - while he scanned her, and checked her genetic makeup on her request. 100% Bajoran. 

They agreed to wait until they got back to DS9 to correct the surgical procedures that had altered her appearance. 

“You’re welcome to stay here until we get back, of course.” He knew if he was Kira, he wouldn’t want many people to see him with a forcibly altered face. Certainly not the face of a people who had oppressed his own. 

“Thanks.” Kira nodded once, and he left them to it. 

When he returned to the bridge, he was surprised to see Garak back in his seat by the console, watching the viewscreen like a hawk. Cardassia vanished into the distance. 

“Did everything go alright?” He asked, trying to be casual enough to appear friendly while also conveying that he was worried about him in a way that only he would understand. 

“Perfectly. As you can see, we retrieved Major Kira without much of a problem. And it seems Legate Ghemor will also be returning with us. He won’t be safe on Cardassia now that he’s been exposed as a dissident.” His voice was cold, unfeeling, his face almost as expressionless. 

“That must be difficult for him,” Julian said, perhaps unsubtly. 

“Well, perhaps he should have thought about that before questioning Central Command. There is always a price to be paid for treason.” 

“Even if Central Command is wrong?” 

Garak chuckled, low and bitter. “Especially if they’re wrong.” 

Julian made sure no-one was watching before touching Garak’s arm. Nothing too obvious or affectionate, just a pat on the bicep. Garak didn’t acknowledge it, but he didn’t flinch away either. Julian sighed and turned to his console. It was a long way back to DS9.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Julian finally convinces Garak to use that holosuite program.

“Ah, Constable. Is there something I can do for you? A new suit, perhaps?”

Odo harrumphed and paced further into the shop. He’d been stopping in every day during his patrol of the promenade since his past with the Obsidian Order had become obvious, like he expected to catch Garak in the middle of some covert operation. Or, like with Quark, Odo just wanted to remind him he was watching.

“I don’t wear clothes, Garak.” 

“I see. Your uniform is a part of your body, then? How fascinating. I have to say, if I could conjure any outfit I desired, I’d come up with something a little more exciting than that.” 

“I’m sure you would,” Odo said. 

He liked Odo. Well, he enjoyed talking to him. The man was gruff and standoffish, and delightfully sarcastic, and not afraid of cutting bureaucratic corners to get his job done. It was always a pleasure to make him roll his eyes.

“So, Constable. If I can’t assist you in expanding your wardrobe, what can I do for you?” 

“You can assist me by staying out of trouble, Garak.”

“What trouble could I possibly get into here in my shop?” He asked, but then leaned in conspiratorially. “Although, now you come to mention it, there was an Andorian woman here a few days ago who was terribly rude to me about the alterations she requested for her ballgown. I confess things may have gotten a little heated.“

Odo raised a brow. “That Andorian woman was a Federation diplomat who hasn’t been seen since yesterday afternoon. You wouldn’t happen to know anything about that, would you?”

“I haven’t the faintest clue. But you’d be surprised at the things people confess to their tailors that they’d never tell anyone else. I’ll keep my ear to the dressing room curtain, Constable.” 

There was his eye roll. “I’m sure you will.”

He smiled politely and Odo left with his usual gruff displeasure. 

Odo was one of the few faces that had remained the same when the station had been handed from Cardassian to Bajoran control. He admired the shapeshifter’s dogged dedication to his work, and he understood the plight of being the only one of his kind on the station. They maintained a level of friendly mistrust which he quite enjoyed. 

He knew about every one of the devices Odo left in his shop to monitor him, and took pleasure in deactivating them when he needed a private conversation. It seemed that Odo hadn’t noticed his relationship with Julian yet, which if he believed in luck, he’d say was lucky. That, or he was biding his time.

He wondered if Odo could get cold. 

He didn’t mind tailoring. He was good at it. But the conversation came in fits and bursts, especially these days when the station was quiet, with people avoiding it for fear of a Dominion attack. Often there were days where apart from Odo, he spoke to no-one. 

Julian was busy for the next few days, and he was too wound up with useless anxiety to come up with an excuse to see him before their scheduled lunch. Instead, he got out the sketch he was working on of a jacket design he wanted to make for him. 

He’d been numbed by isolation in his old life, and exile had just cauterised the wound. But now it was starting to creep back in again, the pain of loneliness. Especially when he felt like this- strange and trapped, too big for the freezing space he was in, lost in memories of a home he didn’t know if he’d ever be allowed to return to as a true citizen.

Some of the other business owners on the promenade were polite enough, but most were either Bajoran or friendly enough with Bajorans not to want to be associated with him. He couldn’t call any of them friends.

The senior staff varied in politeness. Lieutenant Dax was by far the most pleasurable company out of the bunch - excepting his doctor, of course. She was easy to talk to and frequently commissioned interesting holosuite costumes. 

He also spoke to Quark and Rom fairly often. They, like Odo, were familiar faces from before the Occupation ended. Quark had some reliable contacts and information, but it was a bad sign if a man was too friendly with his bartender. And Rom was always, unfailingly, himself, which was refreshing, but didn’t make for scintillating conversation. 

The rush of satisfaction he always got from getting involved with Cardassian politics had long since faded, giving way to a restless apathy. It faded faster and faster every time he was needed somewhere and then set aside again. 

There weren’t any plants here. 

It was a stupid thing to miss, out of all the things he couldn’t have anymore. It wasn’t even specific to Cardassia. Maybe he wouldn’t be so pathologically miserable if he’d been exiled to somewhere with soil. Knowing Tain, that was probably why he’d been given this imprisonment in the first place. 

A Starfleet ensign trudged in with a singed uniform and he hid the sketch behind the counter. At last, something to do besides standing around feeling sorry for himself.

# ***

After a particularly punishing afternoon with Miles, who was missing his wife with a passion that translated into more games of racquetball than Julian knew how to schedule, he returned to his quarters to find Garak reclining on the sofa, reading, as though it was perfectly ordinary for him to be there. 

“Do I want to know how you keep getting in here?” 

“Almost certainly,” Garak said, glancing up to give him a long, appreciative once-over. “Allow me to replicate some dinner for you.”

He set his padd down on the table. Julian noted that it was actually the data for one of his projects, and wondered both where he’d found it and why he was reading it, given he almost certainly didn’t understand it. 

“I don’t know, I’m knackered from that last game with Miles. I feel like going straight to bed.” 

Garak raised his brows and stood. “A doctor ought to know that it isn’t healthy to skip meals. You may well be blown away in a stiff breeze if you make a habit of it. So: dinner first, or I shall get quite disagreeable.” 

“Oh no,” Julian flatly said. “Whatever shall I do? You, being disagreeable? I’m not sure I can cope.” 

Garak came closer with a familiar look of amused desire. “I’m not sure you could.” He kissed him, but when Julian slid his hands around his waist, he stiffened. 

“Hey. You‘re all twitchy."

Garak tilted his head, trying to look placid. He looked tired- more tired than his usual level of tired, anyway. Julian had seen it several times in the week they’d got back from Cardassia, and it seemed it was only getting worse. 

“Twitchy, doctor?” 

“Mm hmm. What’s up?” Julian rubbed his back, and the tension in his muscles was palpable even through his coat before he forced himself to relax. 

“Julian-" he sighed and smiled tightly. “I have merely had a trying day. Perhaps you could help me unwind, hm?” 

Julian raised a brow. “After dinner, maybe.”

“An excellent idea. Though I suggest you change first.” Garak had very strong opinions about his racquetball outfit. Julian conceded to them tonight, and changed into his pyjamas before returning to dinner. 

He settled into his chair in a casual sprawl and squinted at Garak’s bowl.

“ _Zabu_ stew again?”

“Is there a problem, Julian?” 

“Uh- no. It’s just that I was sure you’ve said the replicated version isn’t very good, but you had it at lunch a few days ago. Is it improving?”

“Hardly, but tastes change. I had no idea you were observing my eating habits so closely. Are you looking out for my health, doctor?”

“Something like that,” Julian said. 

He was aware that he could be a bit oblivious when it came to people, but Garak made it so necessary to be observant that he’d practically trained himself to look for patterns in his words and behaviour. Having a perfect memory helped, of course. 

He knew for a fact that Garak had complained four separate times in the past month alone about the quality of replicated _zabu_ stew on the station, and yet here he was, eating it twice in a week. The week after going back to Cardassia. 

“I’m sorry.” 

Garak’s face closed off. 

“It’s hardly your fault the replicators can’t produce acceptable _zabu_.” The tension in his voice was palpable beneath the veneer of sociability. 

“Maybe you should talk to Chief O’Brien about it.” 

“Yes, I’m sure he’d be thrilled to help.”

Aware of the fragility of his mood, Julian rambled on about the last racquetball game he’d had with Miles instead of trying to talk about Cardassia. He’d never admit to missing home as much as he did. Even on his worst days, he’d just smile blandly and say he was _quite fine, thank you._

Julian didn’t know what he could do to help. He didn’t know if there was anything at all that would help. There isn’t a cure for homesickness. 

“Julian?”

Garak was watching him, having already put the plates back into the replicator. 

“Sorry, what did you say?”

“I said you looked rather tired. You did say you wanted an early night.” 

“No, you were right about dinner. I feel a bit more energetic now.” 

“Oh?” Garak’s head tilted, the corners of his mouth curled. 

Julian dropped onto the couch and sprawled out, smiling at him, beckoning. Garak sat gracefully beside him with a frown.

“What’s that look for?”

“I’m grappling with a deeply troubling moral quandary, doctor. Perhaps you can help me.” 

“Go on,” Julian said, knowing he absolutely wasn’t. 

“It’s my responsibility as a lover to inform you of how attractive I find you,” Garak said. “But it’s my responsibility as a friend to keep your ego in check. Do you think it’s possible to find a balance between these two duties?” 

“My ego’s fine, thanks. Feel free to carry on.”

“The kind of person who invites compliments is usually the kind who ought least to receive them,” Garak informed him, remaining still as Julian leaned forwards to undo his jacket for him. 

“I’m inviting your honest opinion. If that happens to be complimentary, so be it. Though I suppose your honest opinion is always a bit much to ask for, even in these circumstances.” 

“What circumstances would those be?” Garak innocently asked, with Julian’s hand halfway up his undershirt. Julian rolled his eyes and eased him out of his clothes, exposing his torso to the dim light. 

“Hello,” Julian smiled and slid down to begin his customary examination, stroking along each ridge and line of scales. 

“Really, you must have memorised every scale on my body by now.”

He had. That didn’t stop him doing this at every opportunity. 

“They’re better in person.” Julian firmly said. Garak put on his usual expression of tolerant amusement, which Julian knew meant he was secretly pleased. A light kiss, and Garak slipped his hand under Julian’s pyjama shirt. His cool skin slid against Julian’s ribs as he tugged him a little closer. 

The different textures of Garak’s body fascinated him. There were so many patterns and rows to keep his mind occupied with counting them, and since he shed his scales the way humans shed skin, the patterns changed subtly over time. And his face - the pale grey, the severe artistry of his ridges - sometimes when he was very still, Julian thought he looked like an ancient marble statue. 

“You really are beautiful, Elim,” Julian murmured. 

Garak scoffed and looked away, shifting uncomfortably. 

“I mean it! I could sit here all day just looking at you.”

He raised a brow. “I’d rather you did a little more than just look.”

“As you wish.” 

He pressed their lips together, tasting coffee and a hint of spice from his meal, feeling him sigh in lazy pleasure. 

He stroked down his chest and around the inverted teardrop shape, down his sides, across his stomach. The deep scars there drifted smoothly beneath his hands. He didn’t focus on them, since Garak always interpreted that as pity, but he didn’t shy away from them either. They were as much a part of Garak as his scales were, and he treated them as such. 

Garak shifted up to pull Julian’s pyjama shirt off him. He felt kisses along his shoulder, then Garak buried his face in his neck with a long, deep inhale. He suspected Cardassians had a much stronger sense of smell than humans, but Garak, of course, would never confirm nor deny. It was at that moment that he wished he’d taken the time to shower instead of just changing from racquetball outfit to pyjamas. 

Then again, Garak didn’t seem to be complaining. 

This seemed like a good time to remind him of something that might distract him. 

“So.” Julian leaned over him and braced his hands on his thighs. Touching him there always evoked a shiver. “Did you have a chance to think about that holosuite program?”

Garak blinked in surprise, then affected a very heavy sigh. 

“You never forget a thing, do you?”

He didn’t. 

“Nope. So did you?”

“Why, exactly, do you think this is a good idea?”

“Because it’ll be nice!” 

“That may be, but-”

Julian slid his hands further up his thighs and squeezed in a very particular way to cut him off. 

“But nothing. You’re being paranoid. No-one’s going to see us going into a holosuite, hack the logs and work out that we’re together from one holoprogram.”

“No-one that you know of.” 

“It’s a tiny, tiny risk. And it’ll be worth it, I promise.”

Garak looked dubious, though Julian thought he could sense a hint of weary acceptance drifting in as he leaned down to kiss him. 

“You’re very set on this.”

“Yes, I am.”

Garak hid his face in Julian’s neck. He felt only the press of lips against his bare skin, and the tingling scrape of teeth. 

Something he’d learned about Cardassians - or at least Garak - was that they like to bite. It had taken a while for it to become obvious, since Garak had been so reticent early on, but the first time he’d really gone for it, he’d drawn blood. There was a lot of awkward apologising and Julian even more awkwardly reassuring him that it was okay, really, he just needed to be more careful next time. Cardassians apparently have sharper teeth and thicker skin than humans. 

He stroked down the ridge that protected Garak’s right shoulder, light as a feather to make him shiver, then bit down as hard as he dared.

Garak stiffened and looked up at him with dark eyes.

“Doctor Bashir, you’re a terribly cruel man.” 

“Come on, Elim. You want to do it really.”

“Your argument is- ah-” Julian sank his teeth in again, harder. It was very satisfying to be able to shut him up once in a while. 

“My argument is perfect and you know it.” 

“It’s...eloquently put.”

“So?”

Sometimes trying to convince Garak to do things was like pleading with a strict parent for something he wanted, and sometimes it was like being a strict parent trying to convince a child to do something that was good for them. 

He hoped it would be good for him, anyway. 

A light touch trailed absently down his spine, and eventually, Garak sighed. 

“Fine. You have defeated me. But I concede _only_ because I want you to stop talking.”

Julian grinned down at him.

“No, you don’t.”

“No.” He kissed him lightly. “No, I don’t.” 

# ***

He was very aware of the physical dimensions of the holosuite walls and ceiling, but the wide open sky, the warmth, the luscious plants that were carefully arranged yet artfully organic- it was surprisingly distracting. He felt like he could breathe without the cold walls of the station threatening to crush him. 

For the first time since he left Cardassia over a week ago, the claustrophobia receded. 

“You like it?” Julian actually looked nervous. Dressed in a very flattering shirt Garak had made him, Julian stood swaying beside him, brow furrowed, smiling nervously. And he could have made a sarcastic remark or some half-hearted joke, but seeing Julian look like that made him want to be genuine. It was a worsening problem. 

“It’s wonderful. Where are we, my dear?” 

“A country called Sudan, on Earth.” There was something else. Julian rubbed the back of his neck and looked away. “This is where my grandparents came from.” 

Interesting. He’d never mentioned his family before. 

“Shall we?” Julian held out his hand, still uncertain, and Garak took it. He’d explain the Cardassian significance of interlacing their fingers in public some other time. 

He was drawn immediately to the huge bed of red and orange flowers at the centre of the carefully symmetrical gardens, walled in by a low line of polished stone. The flowers reminded him of reaching hands, sitting on the arms of green stems that curved gently over. 

“It would be foolish of me to assume you know the names of any of these flora, I suppose.” Garak said. He crouched and cupped one of the tiny flowers between his fingers, feeling the satiny texture of the petals. 

Julian shrugged. “I’m a doctor, not a botanist.”

“A pity. Perhaps we ought to have invited Mrs O’Brien. And the Chief, of course.” 

“Right. You’d just love to go on a double date with Miles and Keiko, would you?” 

“Of course. Mrs O’Brien is a charming woman, and the chief would no doubt try to keep his lesser opinions about me and my people to himself in front of his wife. We may even get along.” 

“You’d be surprised,” Julian said. Garak doubted it. “Computer, identify these flowers?”

_“Flower identified as crocosmia, commonly known as ‘coppertips.’ This variety is montbretia, known as ‘Lucifer’ or ‘Falling Star’, native to the continent of Africa, on Earth.”_

“It is reminiscent of a Cardassian flower common in the capital. _Das’shra,_ it’s called.” Every windowbox in the Torr Sector had a smattering of _das’shra_. 

He had the odd impulse to sink his hand into the rich soil, a need to ground himself after years of barely interrupted time on a space station. But he thought better of it and stood.

There were other people perusing the flowers and taking pictures. He examined their clothes as they passed - the women were almost priest-like in their veils and shawls, unlike anything he’d seen the other humans wearing.

“Come on.” Julian took his hand again and tugged him along with his best, most charming smile. Well, he no doubt thought it was charming, and Garak wasn’t going to tell him otherwise. 

He was led down wide paths of gravel, flanked on either side by short hedges that separated the path from precisely cut, vibrantly green lawns.

“Have you visited this place before? You said this was your grandparents’ land.”

“Oh, we came a few times when we lived on Earth.” 

“‘We’ as in, you and your parents?” He was curious about the Bashirs. Julian said next to nothing about his parents, and his personnel file only included their names. 

“Yes.” He closed off at that, eyes wandering over the lawns and hedges and flowerbeds. 

“You aren’t close with them.”

“No, no. Not really.” 

The fact that Julian wasn’t rambling about them said volumes about the nature of their relationship. He wondered what they’d think of their son, the very model of Starfleet stereotypes, courting a Cardassian exile. 

“What about you?” Julian deflected, obviously. 

“I can’t say I’m particularly close with your parents, either,” Garak deflected, more obviously. 

Julian shoved his shoulder against Garak’s. “Don’t be an arse. I’m not even allowed to ask, am I?” 

“You’re welcome to ask anything you like. It’s you who always seems unsatisfied by my answers.” 

“Go on then, Garak. Tell me about your family.” 

The gardens reminded him of Tolan. 

“You assume I even have a family.” 

“I assume you weren’t grown in a lab.” 

“But you always complain that you know so little about Cardassian biology, doctor. How could you know for sure?” 

They reached a row of trees that had been cut back so vigorously that they were nothing but a trunks with thick, flat-topped branches sticking out of the top like stiff fingers. 

“You see how they’ve amputated the limbs?” Garak pointed out. “Gardening is quite a lot like medicine, I’ve always thought. Perhaps there was a fungus, or an infestation. Perhaps the top branches were removed to stop the trees growing too heavy and collapsing.”

He hadn’t seen so much plantlife in a long time. It felt comforting and familiar, even if the plants themselves weren’t. He’d spent a large portion of his childhood following Tolan around the Tarlak Grounds, watching him tend his orchids, and passed a lot of his free time when he worked for the Order either in public gardens or planting orchids in the gardens of his various landlords. 

“I’m having a hard time imagining you actually gardening,” Julian said. 

“Why?” Garak asked, genuinely curious. “It’s not so different from tailoring. There is a certain artistic vision required, of course, but also a large amount of cutting and shaping. For every flower planted, one must rip out a dozen weeds. Every garden is a delicate ecosystem which must be cultivated by a merciless, expert hand.” 

“Are we still talking about gardening?” 

“I can’t imagine what else we might be talking about.” 

Julian narrowed his eyes. He wasn’t completely oblivious when he made an effort not to be, especially not to metaphors for political intrigue. 

“You’re very fussy about dirt, is what I meant.” 

“I object to _yamok_ sauce smeared across my living space, yes. I have a collection of fabrics that stain very easily, are very difficult to clean and very expensive to replace. But I don’t object to getting my hands dirty in the appropriate environment. There is a therapeutic quality to it, in fact.” 

“I’m sure you could get some indoor plants,” Julian suggested. “Perhaps if you talked to Keiko when she’s back from Bajor, she could tell you about growing things in the environment on the station.”

“Perhaps I could,” Garak said, unsure. 

What he didn’t say was that in the beginning of his exile, he’d never felt like this life was permanent enough to justify growing flowers here. And after the Cardassians abandoned him alone here, after he’d finally given up on the belief that he’d be taken home, it would have been too depressing to admit that it was very permanent indeed. 

He returned to surveying the people around them. There was a group of children in the distance, jumping and running circles around their parents, shrieking in an alien language. Some things are universal. 

Other people moved in the corner of his eye and he watched them. He couldn’t help himself watching, whether the people around him were real or not. It was an old instinct, trained into him so fiercely he couldn’t shake it if he wanted to. 

He was so wrapped up in the holograms, forgetting for a time that they weren’t real, that the hand on his cheek came as a surprise. 

_Getting sloppy, Elim_ , came a familiar voice as Julian kissed him.

“It’s nice to be able to do that outside our quarters,” Julian said. 

“Variety is the spice of life,” Garak absently said. “Loathe as I am to admit it, you were right. This is...nice.” 

He turned, and caught the heavy scent of pollen on the changing artificial wind. All of a sudden he wasn’t standing in the holosuite but in the gardens in the Coranum Sector, with Palandine beside him-

He hadn’t realised how heavily the anxiety of the past week had been weighing on him until he suddenly forgot how one was supposed to breathe. 

Julian was very close. 

“I know it’s mortifying for you to admit that I was right about something, but are you okay? You’re doing the face.” 

There was a face?

He made an effort to shift his expression to one of deliberate innocence. 

“What face would that be, doctor?”

“The worrying face,” Julian chided. “I told you, it’ll be fine. Quark doesn’t have cameras in here.” 

“He had better not,” Garak remarked, glancing around out of instinct. Warm hands on his jaw, more gentle than he could bear, tilted his head back to meet Julian’s soft gaze. 

His eyes were a warm green when they caught the light here, a way they never quite shone in the bland light of the station. His chest ached looking at him. 

_He’s so beautiful._

“That’s better,” Julian said. Garak didn’t even know what his face was doing now. Something hideously blatant, no doubt. The kind of face one makes before kissing a beautiful man. 

He could taste Julian’s favourite oversweetened tea, he could breathe in the smell of him on the wind, drowning out the thick pollen in his nose. The shirt Garak made him had a silky feeling, made of fabric more expensive than he’d admit to Julian, and it was supple under his hands like cool water. 

“What was that for?” 

Julian’s lips were red and a little swollen, bitten in places, his face flushed, hair messy where Garak had held him still. 

“You looked like you needed it.”

“Loathe as I am to admit it, you were right,” Julian quoted, smiling. He could never get used to the way Julian touched him. There was so much care in how those elegant fingers tenderly explored his ridges. 

Julian must have noticed that he’d been unwell lately. And he’d insisted on bringing him here, despite the danger, because he wanted to help.

_You don’t deserve him._

“You’re doing the face again. Don’t you ever relax?” Julian frowned at him. 

“My dear doctor, have you considered the possibility that it’s just you who has this effect on me? Your sartorial choices are a constant source of anxiety. Though I must say that you’ve made excellent progress tonight-” he smoothed down a wrinkle on Julian’s shirt, “I’m afraid past experience has traumatised me too greatly, and thus I worry for you - and your wardrobe - perpetually.”

“Are we still talking about my wardrobe?” Julian asked. His expression had softened.

“I can’t imagine what else we might be talking about,” Garak said, putting on a smile. 

Julian gave him a fond look, sympathetic to whatever painful mystery Garak was hiding from him, but knowing he’d never get anywhere if he asked. 

There was something inexplicable about him. Garak had never met anyone whose demeanour encouraged such a feeling of safety. He never raised his voice. He never panicked. And he was so caring and so raw to others’ pain that injustice made him furious at times, especially towards those he considered to be under his care, but he’d still remain calm and non-aggressive.

Garak didn’t understand how someone could be so empathetic to the suffering of the universe without being jaded.

The flowers around them twitched in the gentle, warm breeze. People picked back and forth across the flowerbeds and bushes, and he turned to watch them. 

“I know about Cardassians and hands, by the way.” 

Garak glanced at him, pleasantly surprised. 

“This-” Julian slotted their fingers together and squeezed. Garak breathed in sharply. “Is quite intimate, isn’t it?” 

“How did you discover this, might I ask?” 

“You think I wouldn’t notice that whole chapter of _By The Greying Dust_ that was just Kar and Martilla holding hands in different positions? Or how in _The Never-Ending Sacrifice,_ all the couples do is hold hands? And in _Meditations on a Crimson Shadow_ , too.”

“Very observant, doctor.”

Julian’s thumb traced down Garak’s index finger, trailing electricity behind it. All awareness of his body bled into his hand, to Julian’s hand, to the warm presence beside him.

“I think you wanted me to notice.” 

“An interesting hypothesis. Why wouldn’t I simply tell you?”

“Because you never tell me anything. Not directly. It’s all lies or literature with you.” Julian’s voice was exasperated, but fond.

“You make me sound like a very difficult man.”

Julian lifted Garak’s hand to his lips with a smile. It was ridiculously endearing. 

“You are. Almost impossible, in fact.” 

“A less confident man might wonder why a Starfleet doctor with a great many demands on his time would choose to spend so much of it with someone so difficult,” Garak said. 

_“Because_ ,” Julian languidly said, caressing the back of his hand, “I love a challenge.” 

“You are aware that we must part ways after this,” Garak cautiously said, as tingling warmth spread up his hand from every place Julian touched him.

“I know. But we’ve still got an hour left here. Aren’t you interested in teaching me all the things I’ve got wrong about Cardassian kissing?”

Garak rolled his eyes. 

“For a start, it isn’t kissing at all. You know, this habit you humans have of drawing inaccurate equivalencies between foreign social norms and your own is truly a detriment to your understanding of other cultures.”

Julian’s eyes sparked with the promise of an argument. Perhaps he’d picked up on that in his literature, too. 

“Really? I think finding common ground is the first step in building a foundation of understanding between different cultures.”

“‘Finding common ground’ is just another Federation ploy designed to erase the individuality of every new world you come across in order to force it neatly into your insipid conception of the universe.”

“Mm, and Cardassians have a lot of respect for individuality, do you?”

“Ah, and there is your condescending Federation morality, being applied to a society that doesn’t suit it. We don’t let our individual desires come before our duty, but that doesn’t mean we have no desires at all.” 

Theoretically. 

“Is that so?” Julian smiled. “What is it you desire, then?” He squeezed Garak’s hand again.

“If you can’t figure that out, then I’ve clearly underestimated your intelligence.” 

He turned their hands so he could feel Julian’s pulse beneath his fingers. It was a very sentimental gesture for a Cardassian, but he doubted that even the scandalous chapter-long exploration of hand positions in _By The Greying Dust_ had given Julian enough context to interpret it correctly.

Either way, it was…nice. He was so unused to things just being nice that he didn’t know how to feel about it. 

“Shall we carry on?” He said, gesturing down an avenue of vibrant green trees. 

“By all means.” 

“Lead the way, my dear doctor.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I meant for this story to be two parts, but the second chapter away from me, so now it's three to balance it out a bit! The third one should be finished soon - Alex


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> last chapter! Julian has a present for Garak.

“Like this?”

He pressed his palm against Garak’s as instructed.

“Precisely.” 

“And this is considered romantic?”

“Well, there are _some_ people who think it an appropriate greeting between close friends.”

Julian could feel the derision in Garak’s voice. 

“Let me guess: you’re not one of them.”

“You compared it to a kiss. Do you typically kiss your friends in greeting? Chief O’Brien, for example?”

“You said it wasn’t equivalent.”

“No, though it could be adjacent. You see, for a Cardassian, this kind of greeting leaves the mouth free for polite conversation. However, since humans seem incapable of polite conversation…”

He trailed off and tilted his head expectantly. Julian took the hint and kissed him. 

“And you wonder where Cardassians get a reputation for being xenophobic. Computer, end program.”

Just for a while, he’d been able to pretend that he was a normal person with a normal boyfriend and they could be together in public without disastrous consequences. But the wind had to stop. The ambient buzz of insects died away. The sky disappeared, and the trees froze and faded with a sigh, and they were surrounded by the smooth black and white grid of an empty holosuite.

The real world filtered back into his senses as silence fell. He could hear the rabble in Quark’s outside the doors, the constant whirr of the station turning around them.

“Well, doctor. That was quite lovely.” 

It was odd to watch him slide back to an acceptably platonic distance, smooth back his hair and put on the amicable mask again. He wondered if he’d helped Garak at all. He had become less tense the longer they spent in the program, but now his spine straightened again and the smile felt a bit more forced. Maybe one day things wouldn’t have to be like this. 

Going back to the gardens in Sudan made him realise that he was starting to think of Deep Space Nine as more of a home than Earth. He had friends here, he had someone who loved him (as repressed as he was about expressing it) and he was in a position where he could study fascinating things and practice conventional medicine at the same time. It was everything he’d wanted when he chose this post in the first place.

It was also vastly stranger than he’d been expecting. Everything was harder and more complicated than he’d thought it would be, including the people. Especially the people. 

When he was a child, Julian was terrified of doctors. To him, they were people who squinted at him as though he was no more than the affliction he’d come in with, who made him feel as though his body was no more his own than his father’s vintage car, something to be looked at, talked about, fixed and sent out again. They knew things about him that he didn’t know about himself, and he didn’t like it. 

He didn’t remember what had been done to him. He had no memory of ever going to Adigeon Prime at all. But some part of his young mind held onto that fear. 

He remembered that fear when he looked at the Jem’Hadar boy that had been found in stasis on a wrecked ship, the boy who flung himself away from medical instruments and tests. It was a tiny moment, imperceptible to anyone else, but set Julian off-kilter for the whole time the boy was there. 

Odo was the only one who could control the boy. They’d built that subservience into his DNA. Reached straight into the essence of him and ripped out his free will, leaving behind only obedience and violence. 

_Genetic engineering._

He had to keep saying it, over and over until it hurt to look at Sisko or Dax or Odo and say it without scowling. 

And while Odo believed the Jem’Hadar boy could become more than his programming, Julian wasn’t so sure. He wanted it to be true, he wished that something as easily rearranged as a set of genes weren’t responsible for the makeup of a being - of himself - but that was the truth. 

He was fundamentally different from whoever he might have become had this not been done to him. And that boy- he never had a chance. 

It was all so infuriatingly complicated. 

He got like this sometimes. He’d find he was comfortable in his life just in time to receive a jolt that reminded him of what had been done to him, and he couldn’t shake it off again. 

Sometimes he felt more like a computer that had been given an upgrade than a person who had undergone a violating medical procedure. And when he got like this, he found that the only thing that helped was sprinting hard in the opposite direction, throwing numbers out of the window and doing something that hadn’t been engineered into him. 

“Doctor?” 

Garak squinted at him when the doors slid open.

“Sorry, I know I’m early. But I’ve got a surprise for you.” He held up the small, innocuous supply medical crate he’d brought from his quarters. Garak raised his brows and eyed it dubiously, but let him into his dimly lit quarters. 

There was a beautifully made black and blue jacket draped over the edge of the sofa, and some sewing tools on the table. Garak swept the jacket and tools aside, and indicated for Julian to place the box on the table. 

“You are aware that I loathe unexpected surprises.”

“Ah, as opposed to expected surprises, you mean.”

“Well, precisely. Knowing you’re about to be surprised makes the experience far more enjoyable, wouldn’t you say?” 

He had actually taken Garak’s professed dislike of surprises into account; all week he’d been smiling knowingly to let him know that there was something going on, and that it was harmless, without having to give away quite what. It had improved his own mood, too. 

“Aren’t you going to open it?”

Garak raised his brow ridges, and sat primly on the edge of his seat to examine the top of the medical supply box. 

“If this is booby-trapped, doctor, I will be most irritated. Impressed, but irritated.”

“I promise, it isn’t that kind of surprise.”

Julian watched him for every tiny movement, trembling slightly as Garak worked out the seal on the small crate and flipped open the lid. 

He froze. Eyes wide. 

Grey hands flinched back from the box as if it stung. 

Mouth slightly open, he glanced at Julian with nothing less than complete shock in his eyes. 

“Where did you get this?”

“That’s classified information,” Julian teased to cover his anxiety. Had he done this right? “But it’s a _das’shra_ , isn’t it? That Cardassian flower? It had better be, otherwise I’m going to throttle that trader I was negotiating with…”

Garak looked back at the crate. It was a sapling, with only a single red flower on its stem. 

“I just thought it would be nice, since you were talking about being a gardener, and I know it’s not the same on a space station, but I was talking to Keiko and it’s not as hard as you’d think to grow things here, and oh-” 

Julian gently reached past the plant in the box to pick out a padd. 

“She sent over some advice and replicator patterns for devices that might help regulate the environment for this type of flower, since it is a bit cold here, and the fellow I got it from had some ideas as well, so I wrote those down too- of course I expect you already know exactly what to do with it, but just in case…”

This was almost certainly the longest Garak ever gone without speaking while lucid. Julian held out the padd, trailing off. Perhaps he’d horribly misjudged this. 

Garak took the padd numbly. “This is the meaning of those secretive looks you were giving me over lunch?” His voice sounded strange, somewhat shaky. 

“Well, yes. Um. Is it alright?”

“Is it alright?” Garak repeated, blank. 

He reached into the crate and gently, delicately, like handling something made of glass - or perhaps a bomb, he lifted out the small silver pot holding the _das’shra_ sapling. The expression on his face as he cradled the pot wasn’t quite like any Julian had seen on him before. The closest comparison was the look he’d had when Julian told him he loved him, but it was more tender than that. 

Suddenly he could see Garak kneeling in a garden, planting the sapling in soft soil with a deadly sharp trowel that flashed in the sun.

“It is a _das’shra_ , isn’t it?”

Garak glanced at him again, surprised, like he’d forgotten what was happening, and seemed to come back to life after the long moment of frozen shock. 

“Yes, yes. It’s very healthy, too,” he enthusiastically said. “You can tell from these vein-like patterns on the petals, you see? The clearer they are, the better. It looks as though it was transplanted recently, but the soil is just right. In the correct conditions, it ought to grow wonderfully.” 

Information spilled out of Garak the same way interesting scientific phenomena spilled out of Julian. He’d never seen him quite like this before, genuinely excited about something without making an argument out of it. His jaded cynicism had faded to the background.

Garak carefully turned the pot in his hands, examining each petal closely. 

“I’m glad you like it.”

“Like it? Julian…” 

For all his eloquent speeches about everything else in the universe, Garak could barely get two words out about his emotions at the best of times. Where Julian blundered through and rambled for minutes on end without really getting anywhere, Garak let slip a cryptic hint once every six weeks, if that. Neither of them ever seemed to get to the bottom of things very often.

“You are by far the kindest person I have ever known,” he eventually said.

The words send an odd shiver through his chest and he got the urge to protest. 

“Don’t be silly, Garak-”

“No, please.” Garak gently put the pot on the table and took Julian’s hand. His fingers were cool as usual, and left a light tingling in their wake when they drifted down his wrist, his open palm and his fingertips. 

Page 217 of _By The Greying Dust_ , Julian remembered. The beginning of the hand-holding chapter. 

“I mentioned this flower _once,_ a flower you certainly hadn’t heard of before. And I know how frustrating it can be to acquire even the most common items from Cardassia these days. This must have been very difficult to find.”

The movements of Garak’s hands were careful and elegant, gliding across his skin. 

“Well, it was a bit of a challenge. But that made it fun, actually. You know me, I get fixated on something and I can’t stop thinking about it until I’ve figured it out.” 

“Still. A replicated version would have served just as well, would it not?”

“No, it wouldn’t,” Julian said, thinking of the _zabu_ stew. “I might not be able to tell the difference, but you would have.”

Garak looked up at him, and gently adjusted their positions so Julian’s fingers were curled into a loose fist, and placed his own hand over them. 

“There it is again,” he lamented. “Your insufferable human _niceness_. If you keep on like this I might be forced to like you. And then where would we be?” 

Julian felt odd about Garak thinking so highly of him, even when he was framing it sarcastically. That had been what he’d wanted, wasn’t it? Someone to remind him that he was a person?

“How terrible that would be for you,” he managed to say. 

Garak dipped his head and smiled. “Quite.”

Then he moved again so he was holding Julian’s hand upside-down, with two fingers pressed against the underside of his wrist. After a brief second, Julian copied him, and earned a warm smile. He could feel Garak’s steady pulse beneath the skin, slow and regular. He calculated 57 bpm. 

“Do the different hand positions have different meanings?”

“Very good, doctor.”

There was that amused, smug look he was so used to seeing over the lunch table. 

“And you’re going to make me work them out for myself?” 

“Given the generosity of your gift, I shall spare you the grief of interrogating me. That first position-” Garak reached out to recreate it, tucking Julian’s fingers into a fist and covering it with his own, “indicates gratitude. It’s not to be used in public, I hasten to add.”

“Why not?”

“Because these gestures are used solely between those who are...intimate. It would give us away quite blatantly.”

He found it fascinating that a species so engaged with conversation and rhetoric had developed an entirely silent method of communication between lovers. 

“Understood. What does the second one mean?”

He tried to recreate the second position, palm to palm in opposite directions, two fingers against his wrist. 

The smug expression returned. “Perhaps another time.”

“What happened to sparing me grief?”

“Well, you do so love a challenge.” He slipped his hand out of Julian’s and caressed his eyebrow and cheekbone with his thumb. Garak wouldn’t tell him what that one meant, either, but he could guess. 

Garak looked back at the flower, deep in thought again. 

“I’m afraid I haven’t anything to give you in return just yet.” 

“You don’t have to, that’s not the point,” Julian quickly said. 

“I already planned to, my dear. It isn’t finished yet, but perhaps you can humour me for a moment.” Garak stood and returned to the sofa with the jacket he’d removed earlier, and Julian realised that it was meant for him. 

There were black and blue panels the same colour as his uniform, with shining lavender and gold embroidery on the sleeves in complex geometric patterns. 

Julian quickly unzipped and stripped off his uniform jacket and took Garak’s very carefully. When he slipped it on, it felt as though it had been made for his body. The shoulders, which he often found too wide in jackets made for men of his height, were perfectly aligned to his own. And the lining was made of something smooth and silky that felt wonderful against his skin. 

“How does it feel?” Garak asked. 

“It’s perfect.”

Garak circled around him and tugged at parts of the jacket, testing the fit. 

“It does seem to be satisfactory. There are always adjustments to be made, of course, but I do have a very _detailed_ record of your measurements.”

“Can I see how it looks?”

“Of course not. It isn’t finished yet.”

Julian started to protest, but he knew he wouldn’t get anywhere. “Do you treat all your customers like this?” He asked, as the jacket was gently removed from his shoulders. 

“You aren’t a customer,” Garak reminded him, placing it carefully over the back of one of his chairs. “If you were, I’d remind you that my opening hours aren’t usually so late. But then I would have to forgive you, just this once, since you’ve brought me such an enjoyable surprise.” 

“Have I changed your mind about surprises, then?”

He found his hand folded into a fist and Garak covered it with his own - gratitude. Then a kiss, smiling, and the feeling that he’d actually got something right. He’d tried to break through the impenetrable wall, and it had worked. 

“Only surprises involving you, my dear.” 

# ***

When Julian was busy in the shower that night, Garak sat on the couch for a very long time, staring at the _das’shra_. He had never quite understood the impulse to cry when experiencing strong emotions besides grief and pain. He found it histrionic. But when Julian presented him with that flower, there had been an odd burning in the back of his throat that he couldn’t explain away. 

It wasn’t an Edosian orchid, nor was this a garden. It was something different, something with a part of Julian inextricably bound up in it. He thought having plants here would merely make his quarters more miserable by reminding him of everything he couldn’t have, but it wasn’t quite like that. It was bittersweet. 

Maybe it was because he hadn’t sought out the little scrap of home for himself. Julian had given it to him, for no reason other than to cheer him up. He wasn’t sure whether he had accomplished that, exactly, but he had certainly done something. 

It had been a very, very long time since anyone had done anything for him simply because they wanted to. 

Julian was quite simply unlike anyone Garak had been close to before - diligent enough to latch onto a single mention of a flower and caring enough track it down, but not observant enough to notice that the jacket Garak carelessly left on the sofa was intended for him. 

He got up and looked out of the viewport. Because it was comparatively close to Bajor, Cardassia Prime shone bright among the familiar pattern of dim stars. 

There would be a day - he didn’t know when, perhaps weeks from now, perhaps years - when he would go home again. There was an answer, and he would find it. Until then, all he could do was help Cardassia from the shadows and find quiet ways to make his exile bearable. 

He heard footsteps leave the bathroom. Julian stood beside Garak with a towel around his waist, arm brushing lightly against his. His skin was damp and hot, and his hair dripped water. 

“Are you brooding?” It was a casual phrase, but he said it softly. The starlight caught the edges of his face when Garak glanced at him.

“Of course not, doctor. I don’t brood. I...contemplate.” 

“What are you contemplating, then?”

“Who says I was contemplating anything?”

Julian exhaled and bumped his shoulder. He often poked or tapped or bumped into Garak when he was being deliberately frustrating. Small bruises were starting to form along his neck and shoulders. 

The silence didn’t last long.

“I didn’t really have a home, growing up. My parents moved too often for me to think of anywhere we went as really mine. It’s funny, but this station is the first time I’ve felt at home somewhere. Do you know how I can tell?” 

Garak tilted his head, curious. 

“When I went to that conference on Klaestron IV, it felt like the shuttle was taking me away from here, as much as it was taking me towards somewhere else. Does that make sense?” 

“For once, I understand you completely.”

Julian sighed, taking on a sheepish look. There was a warm hand on his back. 

“I’m sorry, I don’t mean to pour salt in the wound.”

“What an odd saying. You of all people ought to be careful of what you pour in people’s wounds.” 

He was joking, mostly, and smiled crookedly let Julian see it. He was only as hurt by seeing the _das’shra_ as he was by re-reading _The Never-Ending Sacrifice._ It was the shock of it that had thrown him more than anything. He touched Julian’s shoulder, following along the bruises, feeling the slight indentations of bitemarks in the skin. 

“As I recall, you told me that humans once used salt as an antiseptic. Perhaps the intended meaning is that a certain amount of pain is necessary.” 

“Maybe so. But these days we have dermal regenerators for that.” 

“Ah, but they make for less poetic idioms.” 

Cardassia shone in the distance. Its people carried on as they always had, the vast majority of them completely ignorant of Garak and his exile, as they should be. 

The cold of the station had started to settle in again. All it took was a little tug on the elbow, and his arms were full of warm, bony human. He’d become used to hugging now - hugging Julian, at least - and it was comfortable. He breathed in the scent of flower petals and soil and damp hair. 

It was difficult to feel at home in a prison, but somehow this place, when he was with Julian, had become the closest thing to home he’d had since he was a child. Perhaps the closest he was ever going to get, in exile.

“You’ll have to go soon,” he murmured. 

Julian sighed and stood up straight again, obscuring his view of the stars for a moment. It irritated him when Garak pointed that out, but he couldn’t help it. He had to remind him. He had to remind _himself_ that this could never be a permanent attachment. 

“Yes, I know. But not just yet.” 

“No. Not yet.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for reading! i'm loving writing this series, and i probably wouldn't have posted so much of it without the encouragement of your comments <3


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